While some SEO tasks are best left to professionals, there are many things that you can do to optimize your site without additional help. The following advice will get you started.
When setting up site SEO, don’t forget about your site’s URL. Having a domain is better than a subdomain, if you can set one up. Also, any URL longer than about 10 words risks being classified as spam. You want about 3 to 4 words in the domain and no more than 6 or 7 in the page name.
Use an XML sitemap generator to build an XML sitemap for your website. Upload it into the same directory as your home page. Edit the robot.txt file to point to the sitemap page. Search engines love seeing sitemaps. This is quick way to help your site improve its rank without disturbing other elements of the site.
Use toils such as Google stats to see which keywords are bringing users to your site. Are there any keywords that aren’t getting the hits that you’d expect? These are the keywords that you need to improve. Make sure you’ve entered them as keywords in your page header, be sure that they are thoroughly used throughout your site, and perhaps use them in the title of one of your website’s pages.
To ensure that your website is as easy as possible to crawl, keep your site architecture flat. Don’t use too many sub folders, instead use descriptive names for each page. Keep your pages with the most competitive keywords in their names, close to the root folder, so they will gain a higher page rank.
Use title tags that are relevant to your content. This helps your search rankings because the web crawlers are better able to know what your page is about. Use no more than 60 characters, because most search engines will not display content past that point. If they do show the content, they do not give it as much consideration.
Keywords are the backbone of search engine optimization. Keywords, when written, should be italicized, underlined, and bold when possible. Check into the backlinks of those you consider competitors. Copy their backlinks creatively. You need backlinks pointing at your site as much as possible. Get backlinks from sites that have the same theme as yours.
Try entering the podcast world. Podcasts, in either a video or audio format, are a great way to communicate with your customers with relevant information. Due to the ease of access to the podcasting world, this form of marketing is gaining a lot of traction with businesses who want to a new way to talk to their consumers. The search engines then are able to grab your podcast descriptions.
Open your website in a text window browser to check for errors. You want to read through everything, to make sure that your keywords are clear and that your site does not appear to be spammy. Crawlers will only see what you look at in a text browser, so it is a good idea to look at this yourself.
Use the tips offered here as a stepping stone to higher site rankings and great success for your business. You want the highest rankings possible, and that can only happen with solid, effective SEO practices.
